Brazilian court upholds ban against Chevron and Transocean

Brazil wants Chevron Corp. and Transocean Ltd. to stay out of its backyard, and it told the oil company and its drilling contractor as much on Tuesday when a panel of three Brazilian federal judges upheld the injunction that will keep the businesses from operating in the country.

Chevron and Transocean are banned from Brazil while the courts consider charges against the companies relating to a 3,600 barrel spill outside Rio de Janeiro in November 2011. In upholding the ban, the judges rejected arguments not only from Chevron and Transocean, but also from ANP, Brazil’s oil regulator, which argued that it, not the courts, had the authority to decide which companies can and cannot operate in the country.

That would normally be true, the judges said, except that in this case, ANP’s failure to regulate properly contributed to the spill. They cited an ANP report that said Chevron had "an insufficient culture of safety." Since the ANP knew that, the court said it "contributed to the accident by failing to do its job as a regulator." The ban will take effect in less than a month.